Haste makes waste. The Republican leadership’s rewrite of the tax bill over lunch last Friday accidentally nullified all of their corporate donors’ favorite deductions. In their hurry to make sure nobody actually had time to read the bill before voting on it, the GOP Senate missed some important fine print.

This means plans for the House of Representatives to simply ratify the Senate version of the bill on Monday are out the window. Now, this legislation will have to go through a conference committee (to reconcile each chamber’s bills), adding two weeks to the process, and another vote in each chamber.

The Senate bill lowered the normal corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%. Unfortunately, as part of the process of making up for revenue lost through promises make to buy key Senators’ votes, the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) for corporations (which the GOP intended to abolish) was reinserted in the legislation at 20%.

While corporations could still claim a wide variety of tax credits and deductions, they are now worthless. Companies can either take no deductions and pay 20% — or take lots of deductions and pay 20%.

It didn’t take too long for the US Chamber of Commerce to notice the error and they are not amused.

… Murray Energy Corp., an Ohio-based firm and the largest privately held U.S. coal-mining company, complained that the AMT decision and the Senate’s tougher limits on interest deductions made a “mockery out of so-called tax reform.” Robert Murray, the company’s chief executive officer, said the Senate tax plan would raise his company’s tax bill by $60 million.

“What the Senate did, in their befuddled mess, is drove me out of business and then bragged about the fact that they got some tax reform passed,” Mr. Murray said in an interview Sunday. “This is not job creation. This is not stimulating income. This is driving a whole sector of our community into nonexistence.”

Republicans are now faced with finding more revenue so they can once again eliminate the corporate AMT. This means some of the more odious revenue sources not making it into the Senate bill, like the tax on graduate student tuition will have to be restored to the final version of the bill.

Get ready for more ooops! moments as the bill actually gets read. Now I’m hearing the promises made to Senators Collins (Obamacare funding) and Flake (DACA consideration) have already been broken.

And like that, House conservative say they have no plans to accept the compromises that Collins and Flake secured in exchange for their tax bill votes. https://t.co/NXcCjHV9nF

Who knows where this will end up? The way the Senate’s been breaking rules lately, anything is possible.

Looking for some action? Check out the Weekly Progressive Calendar, published every Friday in this space, featuring Demonstrations, Rallies, Teach-ins, Meet Ups and other opportunities to get your activism on.

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Doug Porter

Doug Porter was active in the early days of the alternative press in San Diego, contributing to the OB Liberator, the print version of the OB Rag, the San Diego Door, and the San Diego Street Journal. He went on to have a 35-year career in the Hospitality business and decided to go back into raising hell when he retired. He's won numerous awards for his columns from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016. Doug is a cancer survivor (sans vocal chords) and lives in North Park.

Comments

Is everyone aware that the Senate bill creates “PERSONHOOD” for fetuses? Yes, they become persons and are eligible for COLLEGE SAVING PROGRAMS. TALK THIS ONE UP SO IT GETS ELIMINATED IN WHATEVER BILL COMES UP. If this passes it is the end of Rowe v Wade and we’ll be living THE HANDMAIDEN’S TALE. GET LOUD.

It goes to the Ways and Means Committee. When members of this committee reach agreement about the legislation, they write a proposed law.
The compromise version of the bill is sent to both the House and the Senate for approval
After Congress passes the bill, it goes to the president, who can either sign it into law or veto it.
It is not over or to late. We need to be louder.

Nope. It goes to a conference committee, selected by the leadership of each chamber. Not that it makes much difference. Republicans don’t have a plan for reconciling a)the promises made to various Senators to buy their votes and b) some way to fix the fundamental math errors in the Senate bill. Here’s USA Today on the process:House GOP leaders moved on Monday to set up a conference committee charged with hashing out all the differences between the House and Senate tax overhaul plans. The Senate is expected to do the same later this week.

But don’t hit play on the Schoolhouse Rock video just yet. While Republicans say they’re committed to taking the tax bill through all the normal legislative steps, this won’t be a typical conference committee that involves open, deliberative compromise between both parties.

“It’s very likely that the real negotiations will take place in private” without any Democratic input, said John J. Pitney Jr., a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College. “This is a Republican-only process from beginning to end.”

Some immediate possibilities or certainties, now that time has has expired for a simple up/down vote by the House Tea Party Freaks:
The House will attach riders that send the poor to private prisons in Guantånamo and that finance the building of others in Turkey and Russia;
Overlooked in their haste the Senate’s elders missed seeing several pages of various members’ penises, complete with tatooed phone numbers;
A rider was passed instructing the National Security Council to coordinate the arrest of President Obama;
One of the pages in the budget misspells the name of Treasury Secretary Mnuchin (Munchkin).
And, an attempt by several GOP Senators to amend the budget to allow them to phone in their votes was defeated when several failed to phone in their votes.

The Republicans helped cause the Great Depression (1929) by giving tax breaks to the elite and deregulating everything. Notice any similarities between then and today? Senator Mitch “The Moron” McConnell may have been alive back then, but certainly has not been keeping up on his history lessons.